The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[Erra]

I have to ask: can the dead humans reproduce?
Even though hell is quite larger than Earth apparently, since each of its citizens can live millennia, won't they have a serious overpopulation problem on the long term ?

As I understand it, no. They also can't get drunk, either.

Well that's just it then, Jesus can't be a second-life human. If he was, he wouldn't be able to imbibe in anything. And he can't be part angel part human because, and correct me if I'm wrong, I thought angels couldn't reproduce. And Yahweh, being just the most powerful version of his species (at least that's how it seems in this universe) and not something more, still wouldn't be able to reproduce. That only leaves the possibility of Jesus being an angel, or something as yet unexplained.

[Erra]

I thought the topography of Hell was a Klein bottle - basically a 3 dimensional Möbius strip. I was never under the impression that the effects were random. They were just different. Remember the secret door to the Heaven's Gate. "He had to go one hundred blocks to the left, ten blocks up, then five back to the right. It was a measure of how cunningly this place had been built that going 95 blocks to the left and then five up would not take him to the same place."

That is not a random space distortion, it is just that addition and subtraction are commutative there.

This is what I was thinking. Who said anything about distortion in the first place?

[GrayAnderson]

Keep in mind that Stuart (the creator of this fictional universe and its de facto god) stated explicitly that Hell was an environment which made high-precision industry impossible. Whatever physical rationalizations you need in order to arrive at that conclusion, regardless of whether you feel the story has sufficiently fleshed them out, it seems reasonable to assume that unless we hear otherwise, it is in fact the case, and that future chapters will be consistent with that statement.

I'll take that point; honestly, I think it'd be nice if we could keep a running tally of author statements somewhere, given that trying to track them over at least three, if not four or five, threads totaling in the hundreds of pages (and quite possibly reaching towards 10,000 posts) is quite the pain. I can accept that this is the case, but I'm still curious as to the rationale given how deep the rationale is elsewhere.

I may be mistaken and optimistic beyond held (which would be a first) but isn't the whole point of the Surpreme Court to uphold the ideals and morals of the existing and only possibly coming society? I know its decisions are based on the political, ideological and moral alignment of its judges but I gathered the features being looked for in judges are NOT egotism and shortsightedness.

It depends on who you ask. On one end, I've heard arguments that the Supreme Court is only supposed to look at laws, judge constitutionality, and that's it. On the other hand, the Supreme Court has also made up an impressive amount of crap at times (Dred Scott, anyone?), not to mention some interesting, creative, and often thrown-out legal doctrines (Right to Contract, for example). Not to mention the fact that realistically speaking, Korematsu probably didn't really meet the standards of strict scrutiny laid out in the decision. So...what it's "supposed" to do and what it actually ends up doing can be two entirely different things. It's an imperfect institution.

There's also the fact that the Supreme Court tends to try and avoid making constitutional rulings as much as possible. They can't wriggle out of this one on standing (that would likely create way too many problems regarding overly-restricted jurisdiction and creating an incentive to kill someone who's suing you to void jurisdiction), the matter is quite clearly ripe, and there's definitely a harm, so the case should go forward. However, a non-decision decision is entirely believable.

The hangup with a lot of this is that there is one quality of death which was always assumed that was never explicitly stated, namely the severing of verifiable contact with the living and through that the inability to claim benefits, continue a suit, etc. That particular quality, I would argue, is an underlying assumption that has just gone flying out the window. Physical death is legally defined, but it always assumed certain consequences which no longer make sense to consider a part of the matter. A second death? Sure. But not the first one...some qualities have simply been transferred down the line a stage.

[Darth Wong]

I thought the topography of Hell was a Klein bottle - basically a 3 dimensional Möbius strip. I was never under the impression that the effects were random. They were just different. Remember the secret door to the Heaven's Gate. "He had to go one hundred blocks to the left, ten blocks up, then five back to the right. It was a measure of how cunningly this place had been built that going 95 blocks to the left and then five up would not take him to the same place."

That is not a random space distortion, it is just that addition and subtraction are commutative there.

Dude, real life is an accumulation of random probabilities. That's what quantum mechanics is all about. You can have predictability at macro scales from accumulation of small-scale randomness.

[xthetenth]

That is not a random space distortion, it is just that addition and subtraction are commutative there.

That doesn't preclude the possibility of both occurring. A rather large amount of things can be built just fine, and if what I'm getting from Mike's idea is right, then what he's imagining is that this type of stuff also occurs on a much smaller scale and at that level it varies pseudorandomly based on some other thing that isn't very easy to understand or is just simply far too computationally intensive to be worthwhile to simulate in order to correct for. This would mean that for high precision machine parts, different parts would have been made when space was warped differently, and the results of these different warpings would accumulate to degrade the precision of manufacture. What I'm thinking would suffer the most are high-tech stuff like computers and jet engines (actually all turbines for that matter), I have a feeling that the imprecisions in manufacture if nothing else would end up raising friction and reducing efficiency if not causing issues with fit that simply make it not worthwhile. All that really needs to be done to prevent Hell from accumulating a manufacturing base for high precision parts is to make it economically unfeasible, not impossible, and this would do precisely that.

[ANTIcarrot]

Keep in mind that Stuart (the creator of this fictional universe and its de facto god) stated explicitly that Hell was an environment which made high-precision industry impossible. Whatever physical rationalizations you need in order to arrive at that conclusion, regardless of whether you feel the story has sufficiently fleshed them out, it seems reasonable to assume that unless we hear otherwise, it is in fact the case, and that future chapters will be consistent with that statement.

Given he might have said that at one point, but I can't help also think of the few dozen times he also mentioned vehicles like tanks and aircraft having maintenance done on them in hell. Motor pools often involve a metal-workshop of some kind. As soon as things like lathes and pillar drills work in hell, then your interpretation fails. I find it hard to imagine how you'd do intensive battlefield maintenance and repair of such machines in hell (especially during the curbstomp war) without using precision machinery to modify and/or manufacture new pieces every so often.

It is possible that this was a reference to Hell's atmosphere, rather than it's geometry? If hell pumice makes a mess of rifles and jet engines, imagine how difficult it would be to build something like a wind up pocket watch. Especially for the first time. It wouldn't last a day before grinding to a halt. In this case 'impossible' would translate to 'ludicrously unlikely because no demon would take such useless inventions seriously'. It becomes a chicken and egg situation. You can't build a precision devices without a clean room, but you can't build the air-pump for the clean room without precision engineering. This would fulfil the story requirement for hell to remain a low tech society, but still allow the HEA humans to be all clever and stuff after they import their clean rooms and air filtration technology.

Besides, writers can be in error; or at least convey things they don't intend. If an author says a character has blue eyes on one page, and then green eyes on another, then it is possible one of these statements needs revising. This might be one of those occasions.

[GrayAnderson]

Keep in mind that Stuart (the creator of this fictional universe and its de facto god) stated explicitly that Hell was an environment which made high-precision industry impossible. Whatever physical rationalizations you need in order to arrive at that conclusion, regardless of whether you feel the story has sufficiently fleshed them out, it seems reasonable to assume that unless we hear otherwise, it is in fact the case, and that future chapters will be consistent with that statement.

Given he might have said that at one point, but I can't help also think of the few dozen times he also mentioned vehicles like tanks and aircraft having maintenance done on them in hell. Motor pools often involve a metal-workshop of some kind. As soon as things like lathes and pillar drills work in hell, then your interpretation fails. I find it hard to imagine how you'd do intensive battlefield maintenance and repair of such machines in hell (especially during the curbstomp war) without using precision machinery to modify and/or manufacture new pieces every so often.

It is possible that this was a reference to Hell's atmosphere, rather than it's geometry? If hell pumice makes a mess of rifles and jet engines, imagine how difficult it would be to build something like a wind up pocket watch. Especially for the first time. It wouldn't last a day before grinding to a halt. In this case 'impossible' would translate to 'ludicrously unlikely because no demon would take such useless inventions seriously'. It becomes a chicken and egg situation. You can't build a precision devices without a clean room, but you can't build the air-pump for the clean room without precision engineering. This would fulfil the story requirement for hell to remain a low tech society, but still allow the HEA humans to be all clever and stuff after they import their clean rooms and air filtration technology.

Besides, writers can be in error; or at least convey things they don't intend. If an author says a character has blue eyes on one page, and then green eyes on another, then it is possible one of these statements needs revising. This might be one of those occasions.

I was thinking atmosphere being the big hangup initially. The atmosphere, absent some very good cleaning systems, would screw up any clean rooms...but those are also plausible, too (if possibly troublesome to deal with).

All of that said, things "working just fine" from a demon PoV plus both the long lifespans involved and an anti-technology bias in society would be enough to keep them from going anywhere in that direction (though I am surprised that developing something didn't come up when that unknown threat appeared...there does seem to be a tendency to experiment with influencing evolutionary mechanisms).

A question, if I might: It's been said that humans, angels, and demons have a common ancestor. Did humans evolve on Earth in this story, and/or was there some sort of intervention (even of the slip-some-genes-in-to-make-things-work variety)?

[Simon_Jester]

The atmosphere is a sufficient reason for precision manufacture to be impossible in Hell for reasonable values of "impossible." It's good enough. Spacetime weirdness is a more fundamental problem that can't be engineered around, which would make precision manufacture truly impossible, but it also raises some weird, worrying problems.

Until Stuart comes down from on high... I don't know what to think.

[GrayAnderson]

The atmosphere is a sufficient reason for precision manufacture to be impossible in Hell for reasonable values of "impossible." It's good enough. Spacetime weirdness is a more fundamental problem that can't be engineered around, which would make precision manufacture truly impossible, but it also raises some weird, worrying problems.

Until Stuart comes down from on high... I don't know what to think.

My gut says to go with "impossible" coming down as "functionally impossible under current conditions and requiring a substantial offset in labor costs to be workable". There's also the fact that even if we trash the place, heaven may be workable as a place for this sort of stuff, as might any other "empty spaces" that are livable which we get intel on, making Hell an uneconomical working space, period. The spacetime stuff is just a mess.

There's also the matter of what value of "precision" are we working with? Again, not an idle question...half of the discussion here involves computer parts as opposed to precision manufacturing (which itself involves lots of variable values...what my grandfather was doing back in the 50s and 60s might be workable while some of the stuff we do these days might not).

[Chris OFarrell]

Just to bring up a little thing, I happened to be re-reading Pantheocide and noticed this;

In chapter 56-57, we have our good friend Yitzchak on the sub contemplate what he is about to do;

Lieutenant Midyan Yitzchak read the latter and sighed to himself. The time had come, all the planning that had gone into this operation would be rewarded. It had taken years to get this operation set up, people had had to be moved into the right places, and they had had to move others into the places they were needed. But, with Divine inspiration, provided by the peerless Archangel who had appeared to them all in their visions, it had been done. They had been promised no reward. They were doing the Lord's will and that was enough.

Here it suggests that this has taken *years* of work, which suggests a very long term plan far beyond the bounds of the Curbstomp war, but I could be wrong about that. Even more critically, he clearly thinks that he is going to get no reward for doing this, and we know that he never establishes contact with Heaven before he is killed. But when he arrives in hell;

"Captain, I wanted you to know this as quickly as possible. I am deeply sorry to have to tell you that your parents, wife and children were amongst those killed at Tel Aviv. They are here and have been identified. Please accept my condolences for your losses. On the subject of Yitzchak, he has made a full confession. He was approached by an archangel called Azrael who claimed to be acting on behalf of Yahweh. According to Yitzchak, Azrael believed that Michael wasn't prosecuting the war with us enthusiastically enough and Azrael saw this as a chance to displace Michael as Yahweh's leading General. Yitzchak was promised archangel status in Heaven and various other Second Life benefits if Azrael succeeded. Obviously, he was misled."

Now this section could be the interogators simply lying for some reason to the Captian as they brief him on the situation...and somehow I doubt Yitzchak has held anything back from the kind of people he would have had working him over...

So....?

[Stuart]

Now this section could be the interogators simply lying for some reason to the Captian as they brief him on the situation...and somehow I doubt Yitzchak has held anything back from the kind of people he would have had working him over...

It's the "unreliable narrator" thing. Something I rather like because it shows how people's opinions are molded by information that may (or may not) be accurate. Here, we know that Yitzchak was not promised a reward so the interrogators were probably lying when they told Ben-Shoshan that he was. Or was Yitzchak lying for some reason, perhaps to hide the fact that he was snookered into committing the atrocity for nothing. So many questions . . . . (Hint, the answer will eventually come froma character we've already met who will keep us abreast of the situation).

On engineering in Hell, the dimensions are non-Euclidian. That means they are curved, not linear. Very slightly curved - a move of 60 or so kilometers will put somebody one or two kilometers out of true but they are curved. What this means is that human equipment built on Earth is subtly different from the same kit built in Hell. At gross levels, for example welding up armor plates and so on, it makes no difference, the deviation is within tolerance limits. Also, it means that Earth-built equipment can be fitted with Earth-built spare parts in Hell with no problems. However, as tolerances get finer and finer, the difficulties grow exponentially. This will mean that on a fine scale, Hell-built and Earth-built equipment cannot be mixed.

This does not mean that manufacturing to fine tolerances cannot be carried out in Hell; they can but the resulting products cannot be interchanged with their Earth-built equivalents. So, for example, some educated daemons sometime in the future could design and build (for example) a fascinating SUV (proposed advertizing slogan "Buy the Euryale Industries Conqueror Sports Utility Vehicle with its V12 engine and fully-integrated GPS/LORAN navigation system. It's as hot as Hell!") That SUV would work just as well on Earth as it would in Hell - until somebody tried to put Earth-made parts into a fine-tolerance application. Than, they just wouldn't fit.

(Sidenote - it was the linguistic difference between the standard usages of "on Earth" and "in Hell" that gave the the idea that Earth was an open environment where we live on the outer surface of a sphere while Hell was a closed environment were people live on the inner surface of the sphere. being incurably pedantic sometimes has unexpected results).

Until, of course, somebody finally works out exactly what the differences caused by the non-Euclidian geometry of Hell are and programs cadcam machines to allow for that difference. Let's suppose the deviance between a straight line on Earth and a "straight line" in Hell is so many milliradians to the left. That can be programmed into a cadcam machine so that every earth-straight line is converted into a Hell-straight line (ie a curve of the appropriate bend). A complex piece of design on earth would be even more complex to our eyes but it would be makeable and could be installed on a hell-built vehicle. However, it would be easier just to import the part from Hell.

The economic consequences of Hell are even more interesting. Left untended, the place will become a massive sump for Earths economic resources as people die and take their worldly wealth there with them. That will bear strongly on future legal developments and leaving money to yourself may not be an option for very long. "Death tax" may develop an entirely new justification.

You know, its really odd that the theologists in all their spouting on about Heaven and Hell never got to grips with the basic economic consequences of the situation.

[Erra]

You know, its really odd that the theologists in all their spouting on about Heaven and Hell never got to grips with the basic economic consequences of the situation.

Obviously. Philosophy, theology, religion, death; all are not nearly as complicated and scary as economics.

[Gil Hamilton]

The Egyptians did as well as alot of the ancient near East religions. It's just that their understanding of the economics of the afterlife lead them to kill and pack their servants along with them, so they'd have them to serve them in the afterlife. After all, they wouldn't want to have to end up toiling in Osiris' fields for eternity to get by.

[Simon_Jester]

It's the "unreliable narrator" thing. Something I rather like because it shows how people's opinions are molded by information that may (or may not) be accurate. Here, we know that Yitzchak was not promised a reward so the interrogators were probably lying when they told Ben-Shoshan that he was. Or was Yitzchak lying for some reason, perhaps to hide the fact that he was snookered into committing the atrocity for nothing.

Or because he's delusional and sincerely believes that he's been promised a reward. The best useful idiot is the one that will reinforce their own idiocy in the process of being useful.

On engineering in Hell, the dimensions are non-Euclidian. That means they are curved, not linear. Very slightly curved - a move of 60 or so kilometers will put somebody one or two kilometers out of true but they are curved. What this means is that human equipment built on Earth is subtly different from the same kit built in Hell. At gross levels, for example welding up armor plates and so on, it makes no difference, the deviation is within tolerance limits. Also, it means that Earth-built equipment can be fitted with Earth-built spare parts in Hell with no problems. However, as tolerances get finer and finer, the difficulties grow exponentially. This will mean that on a fine scale, Hell-built and Earth-built equipment cannot be mixed.

If the curvature is ~1:100 (which is actually very high curvature by the standards of the sidereal universe; the only places space is that curved are within danger-close range of a black hole or neutron star)... the tolerances are going to be a problem for anything made to more than 1% relative precision. Which I suspect includes (for example) artillery tubes.

This does not mean that manufacturing to fine tolerances cannot be carried out in Hell; they can but the resulting products cannot be interchanged with their Earth-built equivalents. So, for example, some educated daemons sometime in the future could design and build (for example) a fascinating SUV (proposed advertizing slogan "Buy the Euryale Industries Conqueror Sports Utility Vehicle with its V12 engine and fully-integrated GPS/LORAN navigation system. It's as hot as Hell!") That SUV would work just as well on Earth as it would in Hell - until somebody tried to put Earth-made parts into a fine-tolerance application. Than, they just wouldn't fit.

Would this actually be that much of an inconvenience? Shipping from any point in Hell to any point on Earth is fairly trivial, and vice versa. It's a problem, it's a nuisance, but I'm not sure it's a critical one. Getting spare parts from Euryale Industries to repair your Conqueror SUV wouldn't necessarily be any more of a problem than getting spare parts from Germany to repair your Mercedes would be.

You know, its really odd that the theologists in all their spouting on about Heaven and Hell never got to grips with the basic economic consequences of the situation.

Oh, they did. "No exchange of material goods is possible, therefore no worries." Or "We have your dead uncle in Purgatory, give us X pounds of silver if you want to get him a seat upgrade." Or "Burn Monopoly money so your relatives will have something to spend in the afterlife!"

Heh.

[GrayAnderson]

Stuart,
I definitely see your point on it being an economic sump of sorts. However, I'd argue that you'd have something else at work, namely a massive pool of investment requiring a relatively low rate of return. Yes, there's a sump in place, but there's also room for a lot of fiddling around with capital; if the dead only require, in effect, a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand dollars of consumption per year, then there's a lot of money you can leave lying around at low rates for decades or centuries invested in companies and decidedly not worried about quarterly earnings reports.

One thing: If you cut off directly leaving funds to yourself, you're likely to create something akin to trusts as they exist now being set up in New Rome (or somewhere else) to take the assets for disbursement to you after death. Also possible is the creation of a bank (and I think I can name some founding directors for you if they get cut out of their pensions) that will recognize your second life self as your main self, and will preemptively list assets as belonging, in effect, to your second life self. Think the Swiss tax shelter mess on a fairly large scale and where by the time the fraud is discovered, you may get a claim of "charges void for want of jurisdiction" if you say that death voids most or all things...and you also have to face the fact that if it's a matter of keeping a couple tens of millions of dollars around for eternity, I think you have a lot of people who would serve a spell for tax fraud to be able to do that. And if you try to get around electronic asset transfer, there are enough precious metals in Hell to make for a workable transfer medium ($1000 buys X amount of gold in Hell, which in turn buys X in New Rome currency).

Let me also offer up the case of how state-level death taxes were abolished in Australia: Sir Joh got rid of the tax in Queensland. All the old people started moving to Queensland, and everybody else dropped theirs to stop the drain on their economies. I could see some limits, but some jurisdiction is going to not go along with this and cut the imposed tax to a lower level, and that's going to induce tax flight...and on the death tax, that's suddenly very applicable and very relevant.

Another way to work this: The government will let you take it with you, but only if you agree to buy some low-interest bonds which mature on a very long timescale. I'm thinking, say, X% of the amount you leave to yourself above a fixed threshold going into a close-to-0% bond (1% or less, probably), maturing in 25,000 years with no options for early withdrawal. There is precedent; Healey exempted this stuff from the wealth tax in the UK in the 70s. The main thing this leaves me wondering is how to avoid an inflationary slug out of that, but in the short term I think you're really going to simply be dealing with war-related debts (some inflation is likely to be inevitable here from all of this spending sooner or later).

Ultimately, though, in one sense you have a sump. In another sense, you have a highly workable capital pool that doesn't require much return on their investment. That presents issues of its own (crowding out and whatnot), but the effects of those issues are a lot less obvious to me at first glance.

[GrayAnderson]

The Egyptians did as well as alot of the ancient near East religions. It's just that their understanding of the economics of the afterlife lead them to kill and pack their servants along with them, so they'd have them to serve them in the afterlife. After all, they wouldn't want to have to end up toiling in Osiris' fields for eternity to get by.

You know, that raises an interesting point as to whether whomever was involved in that pantheon actually had a deal of some sort going with them to that effect.

[Baughn]

In this universe? Hell yes, no pun intended.

All indications are that the other religions were, if not significantly more amiable, at least more involved. Given that, and the fact that mythological ideas of the demons/angels were essentially correct, it is quite likely that the pharaohs would know exactly what they were in for.

They probably expected to end up in a kind of feudal society. Something along the lines of "give us 50% of your work, and you can keep the rest yourself"; with servants, you could pass that burden on to said servants, in effect becoming a minor land-owner acting as a go-between for the peasants and the gods.

[xthetenth]

On engineering in Hell, the dimensions are non-Euclidian. That means they are curved, not linear. Very slightly curved - a move of 60 or so kilometers will put somebody one or two kilometers out of true but they are curved. What this means is that human equipment built on Earth is subtly different from the same kit built in Hell. At gross levels, for example welding up armor plates and so on, it makes no difference, the deviation is within tolerance limits. Also, it means that Earth-built equipment can be fitted with Earth-built spare parts in Hell with no problems. However, as tolerances get finer and finer, the difficulties grow exponentially. This will mean that on a fine scale, Hell-built and Earth-built equipment cannot be mixed.

This does not mean that manufacturing to fine tolerances cannot be carried out in Hell; they can but the resulting products cannot be interchanged with their Earth-built equivalents. So, for example, some educated daemons sometime in the future could design and build (for example) a fascinating SUV (proposed advertizing slogan "Buy the Euryale Industries Conqueror Sports Utility Vehicle with its V12 engine and fully-integrated GPS/LORAN navigation system. It's as hot as Hell!") That SUV would work just as well on Earth as it would in Hell - until somebody tried to put Earth-made parts into a fine-tolerance application. Than, they just wouldn't fit.

...

Until, of course, somebody finally works out exactly what the differences caused by the non-Euclidian geometry of Hell are and programs cadcam machines to allow for that difference. Let's suppose the deviance between a straight line on Earth and a "straight line" in Hell is so many milliradians to the left. That can be programmed into a cadcam machine so that every earth-straight line is converted into a Hell-straight line (ie a curve of the appropriate bend). A complex piece of design on earth would be even more complex to our eyes but it would be makeable and could be installed on a hell-built vehicle. However, it would be easier just to import the part from Hell.

I think that this would also require a lot more thought to be put into manufacturing large things in Hell. Since the dimensions are curved, the resulting pieces will curve in that direction, which sounds simple enough until you try to put together a bunch of large pieces, all with their own curve, meaning you'd have to align the pieces to each other, basically building them so they'd curve in the proper way to match up, which sounds like a nightmare to figure out. I don't get a feeling that Hell's going to be doing a booming trade in structural members anytime soon, for example, unless some artsy architect goes way overboard.

Also, the compilation version (and the post version) has this to say about the construction of Heavengate:

In the darkness, he slipped over the wall, making his way down the stairway towards the entrance. It was tiny, too small by far for him to use. But, once he had found it, he was able to orientate himself. He had to go one hundred blocks to the left, ten blocks up, then five back to the right. It was a measure of how cunningly this place had been built that going 95 blocks to the left and then five up would not take him to the same place. In any case, climbing at anywhere other than the right place was impossible.

I think you'll want to fix that, because right now it just seems like Belial can't add. My question though, is what in the world are the dimensions like on these bricks so that curvature issues arise in the length and height of just five of them? I would presume that'd mean they're very long and not particularly tall, which doesn't sound like a very normal construction material .

[GrayAnderson]

Yeah...the Egyptian guys seem to have been some of the more amiable folks (the Greeks were as well, but they're late enough in the timeline to cast doubt onto what was actually going on; the Egyptians can point back at least 3000 years before we know the "other gods" were cleared out), so deal-making seems to have been doable. And to be fair, while not ideal, an eternity of retained social status and position is just peachy compared to the other deals apparently floating around.

Another one of my plethora of follow-ups for ideas on dealing with the dead and money: Some sort of "Valhalla" exemption (for those severely injured or killed in combat) from any restrictions seems almost mandatory; a variation for veterans going forward does as well (as I'd think we're creating an incentive to put off dying as long as possible otherwise, particularly for those lacking heirs, if we don't allow something).

[xthetenth]

Another one of my plethora of follow-ups for ideas on dealing with the dead and money: Some sort of "Valhalla" exemption (for those severely injured or killed in combat) from any restrictions seems almost mandatory; a variation for veterans going forward does as well (as I'd think we're creating an incentive to put off dying as long as possible otherwise, particularly for those lacking heirs, if we don't allow something).

As long as they have the vitality to be productive to society, that's a good thing if they stay in their first life. One positive impact of Hell becoming ours is that it's an enticement for people who can do meaningful things for society to actually do them. It means we can utilize the resources of Earth (especially the non-quantfiable ones like being easier for manufacturing and having a very good climate for some things that Hell doesn't) much more effectively because it enlarged the labor pool by taking away the greatest incentive for retirement: the inability to take it with you. Because that's no longer the case, it means that on average all the inhabitants are going to be working more, and therefore providing more for society. I do have to wonder whether the birth rate would be affected negatively by a population that lasts longer, though, it seems that having more kids would be easier due to the longer lifetime to offset it, but depending on how fertility is affected I'm not entirely sure what would happen, since there aren't any really good data to mine that I know of.

Plus, with hell being fertile and the massive increase in the number of people who want to work agriculturally, the population capacity of Earth just increased tremendously, so we can support a much larger population, again making people who don't want to die quite yet rather valuable for doing things that are better done on Earth such as manufacturing (especially if we can deal with pollution, which should be yet again easier).

A few hundred years from now (or maybe just one), I can see enticements to stay on Earth, which has to a large degree become a manufacturing center for Hell centered on sprawling city-like industrial centers, which has a much more agricultural economy and most power generation being done through nuclear plants in isolated corners of Earth and Hell. But that's just what I'd do, and I bet there's better and worse ideas floating around that will get used too.

[Stuart]

I think you'll want to fix that, because right now it just seems like Belial can't add. My question though, is what in the world are the dimensions like on these bricks so that curvature issues arise in the length and height of just five of them? I would presume that'd mean they're very long and not particularly tall, which doesn't sound like a very normal construction material.

No, that's no problem. The blocks making up the wall are different sizes so 98 rocks along the 5th row takes you to a different rock than 5 rocks up the 98th column. That's a very old security system that goes back to Roman times if not before.

[xthetenth]

Yes, the thing is that the bit is phrased with the expectation that going 100 to the left, then up ten, then five right (leaving him at 95 left, 10 up) would lead him to the same place as going 95 to the left and then 5 up, when even if everything did work as expected that'd leave him 5 lower than his target. Also, I just thought that it wouldn't be a very good security system either if it took place in a 5x10 block area since you'd be able to see the trickery, silly me. I guess I'm too used to modern style homogeneous building materials because it'd be a lot easier to slip in another row with different sized stones.

[Edward Yee]

Or "Burn Monopoly money so your relatives will have something to spend in the afterlife!"

This is EXACTLY how I spent two weekends... although the first time visiting the grave of an aunt's Christian husband had everyone standing around awkwardly, unsure of what to do.

[GrayAnderson]

Another one of my plethora of follow-ups for ideas on dealing with the dead and money: Some sort of "Valhalla" exemption (for those severely injured or killed in combat) from any restrictions seems almost mandatory; a variation for veterans going forward does as well (as I'd think we're creating an incentive to put off dying as long as possible otherwise, particularly for those lacking heirs, if we don't allow something).

As long as they have the vitality to be productive to society, that's a good thing if they stay in their first life. One positive impact of Hell becoming ours is that it's an enticement for people who can do meaningful things for society to actually do them. It means we can utilize the resources of Earth (especially the non-quantfiable ones like being easier for manufacturing and having a very good climate for some things that Hell doesn't) much more effectively because it enlarged the labor pool by taking away the greatest incentive for retirement: the inability to take it with you. Because that's no longer the case, it means that on average all the inhabitants are going to be working more, and therefore providing more for society. I do have to wonder whether the birth rate would be affected negatively by a population that lasts longer, though, it seems that having more kids would be easier due to the longer lifetime to offset it, but depending on how fertility is affected I'm not entirely sure what would happen, since there aren't any really good data to mine that I know of.

Plus, with hell being fertile and the massive increase in the number of people who want to work agriculturally, the population capacity of Earth just increased tremendously, so we can support a much larger population, again making people who don't want to die quite yet rather valuable for doing things that are better done on Earth such as manufacturing (especially if we can deal with pollution, which should be yet again easier).

A few hundred years from now (or maybe just one), I can see enticements to stay on Earth, which has to a large degree become a manufacturing center for Hell centered on sprawling city-like industrial centers, which has a much more agricultural economy and most power generation being done through nuclear plants in isolated corners of Earth and Hell. But that's just what I'd do, and I bet there's better and worse ideas floating around that will get used too.

Good point on comparative advantage with agriculture...and ironically, with all of the trouble that Earth's farms are having, that's rather a relevant point now. Also, I still hold to my suspicion that we've got multiple planets scattered around that Yahweh and Co. had wrecked before and either driven the relevant sentients to extinction or at least wrecked their civilization and reduced them to a scattered remnant (I'm not barring the latter, though I'll grant that it's arguably unlikely). So...I'm thinking an almost hyper-expansionist humanity may be one side-effect of all of this (if there are enemies out there that can force peace between two warring deities, then we're going to want to make damn sure our species has some sort of multiple redundancy built in).

Also, I think it's probable you'll eventually get bubble universe electronics in some form (as Stuart said, all you really have to do is program the machines right), but my gut says that it'll tend to be either lower-level stuff or some genius deciding to be extremely proprietary with his work. I suspect the curvature is somewhat less drastic than 1:100 (keeping the size of a neutron star in mind and knowing that this place is that much bigger), but I still see the compatibility issues Stuart raised (and as he put them, they make sense).

I'll still contend that even if you get "can't take it with you" laws, you're going to need some quirks in the system to avoid pay stresses on important but high-risk fields (soldiering being the big one in the short term; Caesar's legions aren't going to be unlimited in size, after all...and it's all great to talk about laying down one's life for one's country, but one should not structure the tax system to ensure that doing so is a beeline to eternal indigence).

[Chlodwig]

Ultimately, though, in one sense you have a sump. In another sense, you have a highly workable capital pool that doesn't require much return on their investment. That presents issues of its own (crowding out and whatnot), but the effects of those issues are a lot less obvious to me at first glance.

Im not sure if interest as we know it will really work in this cenario in the very long run.
The problem is that yes, with any interest at all the money pool is going to rise, but having a couple billion 2nd lifers generating huge amounts of money will only work if there is something to actually buy for them. I can see a big inflation comming up because people have a lot of money and not enough goods/services to buy with them.
Was it Hitchhikers Guide where they head tree-leaves as money and ended up with 3 forests for one peanut?

My guess for the very long term is that most production/capital is going to Hell or Heaven and Earth is 'reduced' to a breeding ground.
Why spend your first life which only lasts 80-100 years (or 40-50? and then entering 2nd life voluntarily? ) on work when you have all eternity in hell to do so much easier anyway?
Especially if 2nd lifers can't visit earth for more than a day or so I don't see much point in investing into infrastructore on earth (again in the very long run).